Category: Reviews

Fahrenheit 9/11

I caught a midday showing of Fahrenheit 9/11 down at the Metreon today. I walked in knowing Moore’s trying to get you to walk out feeling a certain way, and in that regard, the movie was pretty much what I expected it to be.

The first section deals with 9/11 and the Bush / Saudi / Bin Laden connection. I could definitely have done without the footage of 9/11 itself. As I’ve said before 9/11 is a very painful topic for me so I prefer to not be reminded of exactly how painful that day was. I suppose Moore wanted to get some emotional punch in before drawing all the lines between the Bushes, the Bin Ladens, and the Saudis, but it felt a little too much like I was being manipulated to feel bad.

After that, Moore deals with the various responses to 9/11 -Afghanistan and the Patriot Act mostly. And here’s what I didn’t expect. I laughed. Several parts of the middle section – particularly when two Marine recruiters in full dress uniforms are walking around a parking lot in Flint, MI looking to sign up new recruits – are quite funny in a snarky sort of way.

Moore also sidetracks into one of his bete noires – how African Americans get screwed in America. It’s a valid point that most of the kids in the armed forces are from poor backgrounds, but I think he’s stretching a point by implying that they’re all black. The issue is class not skin color. Even Moore’s own footage of Iraq shows more white faces in uniform than anything else.

And speaking of the Iraq footage – I have no idea how he got the stuff but it’s very raw and powerful. In a way I felt that this section of the movie was the most original, in that it’s something that nobody is actually showing to us here right now. It’s not easy to watch soldiers crying out in pain right after being attacked, burned bodies being dragged through streets, or soldiers putting hoods on prisoners’ heads and cracking jokes about erections. These are images that show us what is really going on in our name, though, and we need to understand exactly what price we’re paying.

It’s been widely reported that the story of Lila Lipscombe and how she loses her son in Iraq is the emotional heart of the film. It is sad, but somehow it didn’t affect me as deeply. What did make me cry? A little earlier in the film, Moore overlaid the theme song from notable 80s TV flop “The Greatest American Hero” on top of footage of Bush’s trip to an aircraft carrier to declare combat operations “over”. It’s a cheesy song but for whatever reason I have always liked it. The juxtaposition of a song I like over pictures of President Bush surrounded by happy troops was a somewhat surreal combination. And then at the line in the song that goes “Should have been somebody else” I started to cry, thinking we should have had Gore as president instead of this loser.

Yes, I’m probably weird for crying at that point instead of when Lila Lipscombe’s son dies. But that’s how it happened.

I’m glad I saw the film. I don’t think it’s going to change many – if any – minds, mostly because the people who most need to see it (hello Dad, are you reading this?) won’t bother going. And honestly, I don’t see why it got the Palme d’Or at Cannes except as a way of expressing support for the political views in the film. Unlike previous winners with a war theme, like “The Pianist” or “Apocalypse Now”, I don’t see people watching Fahrenheit 9/11 10 years from now. It’s a move for 2004, not for the ages.

All that said, it says a lot about America that despite all the problems our nation has, a film like this can be made and distributed and people can go see it without fear of reprisal. And it’s a film worth seeing.

Coffee Worth Drinking

I’ve been meaning to do this for a while now, but with the recent increase in my site’s traffic this is a good time to finally post about some coffee that people I know are helping to bring to the USA.

The company is called Cafe Cosa. According to the website, their Q’Tal Tarrazu coffee is 100% single-origin Tarrazu coffee from Costa Rica. I’m by no means a coffee expert, but it’s good stuff. Strong but not bitter. Worth a try.

Check out their website and give the coffee a try!

The Fog Of War

I finally got around to watching The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara yesterday.

All I can say is, wow. Anyone who doesn’t think our situation in Iraq today is not similar to the situation in Vietnam needs to see this. It’s oh so clear that the people running this country have not learned a damn thing in the ensuing 40 years. Some of the things LBJ said in 1964 (according to the movie) could just have easily come out of GW Bush’s mouth. I’ve blogged previously about how Rumsfeld has channeled McNamara.

One point McNamara made that stands out in my memory was about the huge culture gap between the US and Vietnam, and its resulting problems. He more or less said, “we though we were fighting the Cold War. They (the Vietnamese) thought they were fighting a civil war”. This was contrasted sharply in the movie with how the Cuban Missile Crisis was handled, where McNamara describes how the US players put themselves into the Soviet shoes and thought through how to resolve the crisis and save face on both sides.

With Vietnam, LBJ is quoted as saying they didn’t know what was going on in Vietnam as they got into the war, except that they knew they had to win the “hearts and minds” of the Vietnamese. “We need to be able to guarantee their security” was another phrase I jotted down as I watched. The parallels with today are so obvious it’s not even funny.

McNamara paints himself now as someone who had grave reservations about Vietnam but ran the war as best he could out of loyalty, until finally he found himself disagreeing with LBJ so strongly he had to go. Whether that’s really how it was, I don’t know. And although he was pushed rather strongly by the filmmakers, he refused to say whether he regretted what he did as Secretary of Defense or explain why, if he felt the war was wrong, he would not speak out against it after he left government service. he sys he has his reasons, but doesn’t say what they are.

All in all, for history or political buffs, it’s well worth renting. In the additional materials on the DVD are several clips not included in the movie. One was the famous 1964 ‘girl with dasies/nuclear bomb’ commercial LBJ used. I’d read about it many times but never seen it. I sat there slackjawed as it played out – it is amazingly powerful.

And Speaking of The Davinci Code

You know it’s getting silly when what Dan Brown left OUT of “The Davinci Code” is newsworthy.

Dan Brown said that when he wrote the best seller that dissects the origins of Jesus Christ and disputes long-held beliefs about Catholicism, he considered including material alleging that Jesus Christ survived the crucifixion.

It’s a reasonably entertaining novel but it’s not going to sit next to “Wuthering Heights” or “I, Claudius” in the annals of classic fiction. I have to assume that it’s the subject matter, and that some people are having a hard time having their religion treated as fodder for fiction.

I suppose I shouldn’t be so surprised. The amount of traffic my little review of “The Davinci Code” has generated is still regular, more than six months after I posted it.

I’m currently in the middle of a Daniel Silva novel, “The Confessor.” It’s a decent read so far. I hope he doesn’t have the same third-act problems that Dan Brown has.

Heart of Oak

It’s late and I’ll pay for this when the alarm clock goes off oh so early tomorrow morning, but I saw “Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World” tonight & wanted to throw down a few lines while my impressions are still fresh.

As a longtime avid fan of the Patrick O’Brien Aubrey/Maturin series, I had waited for the opening of the movie version with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. Happily, I was much more pleased than disappointed by the results. Given the limits of what you can cram into one movie, I think they did a fair job of bringing an O’Brien book to the screen. But my pleasure was not unalloyed.

Other, less exhausted reviewers of the movie will go into detail of the subplots cut, the bits freely borrowed from other O’Brien novels, and the somewhat contrived ending. I’ll limit myself to these few observations:

1) I think they could have kept the original love triangle subplot with Midshipman Horner, the gunner, and his wife rather than making Horner out to be just another aging, inept midshipman who couldn’t pass for lieutenant. I suppose it made the film too long to add it in.

2) I’m a fan of Billy Boyd, but I found him somewhat incongruous as Barrett Bonden. I’d always pictured Bonden to be older and not as good looking.

3) Russell Crowe did a good job as Aubrey. I would have liked to see Aubrey a little more human and less permanently enrobed with the godlike authority of a captain, but that’s not what you get with Crowe, and all things considered it was an acceptable tradeoff. He certainly did a good job of the glee Jack felt when sailing Surprise into a storm or boarding a Frenchman’s deck, for example. And I loved the ‘lesser of two weevils’ bit.

4) Maturin. As with Billy Boyd, Paul Bettany is a good actor, but my mental image of Stephen Maturin was not in line with him. Bettany is too tall and too good-looking to be the small, scrawny, bewigged Doctor. And in the final battle, despite the fact that O’Brien does take pains to demonstrate that Stephen is a good fighter, there’s no way Maturin would have boarded the enemy. His place was in the cockpit with the wounded and he would not have left it.

4) Blakeney. I would have preferred meeting young Babbington.

Despite my quibbles, I do think “Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World” is a move well worth seeing and I suspect it will fight it out with “Lord Of The Rings” for a few Oscars this springtime.

Dana, Dana, Dana!

Thanks to the ever-so-generous people at AlphaSmart, a fabulous new PDA landed on my desk today – the Dana Wireless. Now I can blog from anywhere in the house, untethered to my PC.

The only problem is that the DanaWeb browser, which takes advantage of the Dana’s widescreen capability, is quite buggy. The two problems that I find most annoying are it has issues with scrolling and the forms handler doesn’t like extended text entry (a big minus for bloggers!). Eudora’s PalmOS web browser, although not widescreen enabled, seems to handle forms a bit better and is thus more suited for WiFi blogging, although it doesn’t take advantage of the Dana’s ample screen real estate.

Other PalmOS Internet apps I’ve tested seem to work fine too. Verichat and upIRC, my two favorite messaging apps, both work flawlessly with the Dana, although neither had widescreen capability. And SnapperMail, an awesome email app, IS widescreen enhanced and works quite well.

The Dana keyboard is full sized and handles nicely, although some of the keys tend to be a bit sticky. I’m not sure if that’s an issue with my Dana or if I’m pounding the keys too hard (a bad habit). At any rate, I’ve long wanted a simple laptop or laptop alternative that was wifi enabled so I could do some basic online tasks without having to leave the bedroom or living room.

Now I can.

Go Dana go!